World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys

A 500-mile journey across South Africa in a luxury hotel train, which travels between Pretoria and Durban on the coast over the course of three days.

The 200-mile Ligne de Cévennes, which travels northwards through the Massif Central to France's volcanic heart - Clermont Ferrand and the spectacular Puy De Dome. The route takes travellers across three incredible historic viaducts, plunges deep underground to explore the area's hidden wildlife and traverses through several impressive valleys. The route winds through one of the world's most spectacular national parks, before reaching its final destination, a collection of 80 dormant volcanoes.

New Zealand's Northern Explorer, the longest-running passenger service in the country. The train travels 423 miles along the historic North Island Main Trunk Line on a 12-hour voyage and the journey takes travellers through some of the most astonishing landscapes of the southern hemisphere from volcanoes to coast and from lava fields to unspoilt islands. Historians explain the history of the railway and tell the tale of the terrible tragedy at Tangiwai, when over 150 people were killed by a volcanic mudflow that hit the train.

A 600-mile journey through one of the most world's most northern countries - Finland - from Helsinki in the south to Kemijärvi in Finnish Lapland. The line whisks passengers through the thickest of forests, past vast frozen lakes 63 times the size of Lake Windermere and to station stops where time has stood still. As the train enters the Arctic Circle, it calls at Rovaniemi, a place destroyed by German soldiers at the end of the Second World War. Now the town has been re-built, famously in the shape of a reindeer, serving as the official home of Santa Claus.

A train journey across Sri Lanka along one of the world's best-preserved Victorian railways. The trip begins in the coastal city of Colombo and moves on to the country's cultural and spiritual heart in Kandy. The journey continues through a a very English town that produces some of the world's finest teas, coming to a stop at a hill station surrounded by tropical forests close to one of the world's most spectacular viaducts - the Nine Arch Bridge.